Bluntly: country is killing it. Ella Langley has been directly killing it for months; Morgan Wallen remains one of the biggest commercial forces in American music, and even Kacey Musgraves is saving the furniture from her latest album with the hit ‘Mexico Honey’. Of course, after the death of Dolly Parton, the artist’s catalog is experiencing a new explosion of listening and presence on the charts. It just reached the UK top 1 for the first time.
In this context, Shania Twain has just released a country-pop album and the commercial result could not have been more disappointing. ‘Little Miss Twain’ debuted at number 131 on the Billboard 200, with around 11,600 equivalent units, mainly thanks to physical sales. It is the worst debut of a studio album of his entire career.
The contrast with the current country revival is quite brutal. In the international charts there are some results worth mentioning: ‘Little Miss Twain’ reaches number 4 on Country Albums in Australia, number 5 on physical albums in Norway, number 8 on Pop Albums in Germany, number 7 in the United Kingdom and, above all, number 1 on UK Americana and UK Country Albums. It also reaches 2 in Scotland. But other markets are much colder: 20 in Canada, 19 in Germany, 24 in Austria, 23 in Belgium, 73 in the Netherlands… and that American 131 directly hurts.
Because we’re talking about Shania Twain. An artist with three consecutive diamond-certified albums in the United States during her imperial period, including ‘Come On Over’, which remains the best-selling country album of all time. So we understand each other: Shania Twain ran so Taylor Swift could fly.
Why isn’t anything happening with Shania Twain right now? There’s one glaring problem: ‘Little Miss Twain’ has had virtually no song. We can talk about how funny things like ‘Stranger Things’, ‘Dirty Rosie’ or ‘Problematic’ are, but there is no ‘Man!’ I Feel Like a Woman!’, a ‘That Don’t Impress Me Much’, not even a ‘Giddy Up!’ that is functioning as a gateway to the disk. At least ‘Now’ (2017) and ‘Queen of Me’ (2023) had more or less identifiable songs. ‘Little Miss Twain’… no.
Shania should have a much easier time riding this country wave than many of today’s artists. She (Shania, not Langley) helped precisely build the bridge between country and pop that so many artists are crossing again today.
Of course, many things have happened between that Shania and this one. First, a very long parenthesis: ‘Now’ arrived 15 years after their previous studio album. And then there’s the matter of his voice. Twain has explained on numerous occasions how Lyme disease affected the nerves related to his vocal cords and how he had to undergo surgery and rehabilitation to be able to sing again. Her voice changed and, although she herself has learned to live with it, it is evident that we are no longer facing the vocalist who dominated the radio in the 90s.
The curious thing is that its cultural relevance does seem to be intact. The new generations have claimed it, its aesthetic is still tremendously recognizable and Harry Styles has taken it on tour because his mother adores it and made him become a fan. Shania herself has also continued to cross paths with artists of later generations such as Orville Peck. I mean: Shania Twain is still cool. What doesn’t seem to continue to work as well is Shania Twain as a singles artist.
Her last truly recognizable hit came, in fact, outside of her own album: ‘Unhealthy’ with Anne-Marie, in 2023. Shania retains the name, the repertoire, the influence and the affection of several generations. What ‘Little Miss Twain’ hasn’t managed yet is to turn all of that into a song that people want to hear right now.
